Cycling’s culture of drugs revealed

Former teammate of Lance Armstrong talks about how well organized doping was

Michael Barry

Toronto cyclist Michael Barry says he never saw Lance Armstrong doping during the four years they rode together on the U.S. Postal Service team.

But in light of a scathing statement from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency Wednesday, an interview with Barry leaves little doubt over the performance-enhancing drugs allegations against the seven-time Tour de France champion.

“I never saw Lance personally dope,” Barry told the Star. “But I think the evidence of this case, through the other riders’ testimony, you’ll be able to draw your own conclusions.”

Barry tried to peddle around direct questions about his former teammate and the extent of his own doping activity, which he revealed for the first time Wednesday.

“I know what I did in the past and I know what I was a part of and I had to give honest statements to everything I was involved with,” said Barry, who admitted to three years worth of doping with the team after denying it in the past.

“He (Armstrong) has his way of going about it, I can explain what I experienced and say what I experienced. I can’t comment too much on his angle or his direction with it.”

The agency issued Wednesday’s statement in advance of a much anticipated report detailing the evidence it has collected against Armstrong.

The report is backed by some 1,000 pages of sworn testimony from 26 people.

“The evidence also includes direct documentary evidence including financial payments, emails, scientific data and laboratory test results that further prove the use, possession and distribution of performance enhancing drugs by Lance Armstrong and confirm the disappointing truth about the deceptive activities of the USPS Team, a team that received tens of millions of American taxpayer dollars in funding,” the agency said.

Barry was one of 11 members of the Postal Service squad to give sworn evidence to the agency, telling them that team doctors and managers were in on the scheme — one which the agency called “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen.”

Barry says the team and the sport were “infected” by performance-enhancing substances and that the Postal squad ran a fevered doping practice.

“The doctors were involved, the directors were involved, there were very few people who didn’t know what was going on,” Barry says he told the agency.

“Their trainers (were) providing the drugs. It was organized and the drugs were provided to us.”

Like many admitted cheats before him, Barry says doping was the only way he could reach a playing field that had been elevated above natural human capacities.

“When I reached the professional ranks I was disheartened and shocked to find out the reality,” said Barry, who has written for the Toronto Star on the Tour de France.

“I’d had this childhood dream, I grew up riding around the streets of Toronto, dreaming of being in the Tour de France.

“Then when I got over there (to Europe) and started racing professionally I realized it was not even close to the world I had imagined.”

Barry says he began doping in 2003, his second year with the Postal squad, in order to simply compete.

“I gave into doping. I was pushed to my limits physically, I’d had some really bad crashes and I was surrounded by it,” he says.

“There was peer pressure involved, there was a generally speaking group think and we did unethical things and I deeply regret those,”

Barry, who wrote a book on his experiences with the team, says he quit doping after a serious 2006 crash — which left him in a coma — and has ridden clean since.

“When I was coming back, I realized I was damaging my health and I a part of something I…didn’t feel good about at all,” he says.

Barry says he subsequently sought out teams that strove to ride clean.

“Since 2006 I’ve ridden with two teams that are committed to anti doping,” he says.

Barry, 36, says he hopes the report will lead to a culture shift in all of sport and that it can have that power regardless of any continued silence on the subject by Armstrong.

“Regardless of what Lance admits to or doesn’t admit to I think through our testimony it will be apparent that cycling needs to change and sports needs to change,” he said.

Barry, who retired this summer and currently lives in Spain, says he plans to return to Toronto and work in some aspect of his sport.

He spent the last three seasons riding for the British Sky Team.

Barry’s most recent win was in 2009 at the Giro d’Italia when, along with his former Team Columbia-HTC squad, they won the opening team time trial.